May Flowers: Poppies

Roxanna, of Illuminated Perfume, has organized a blogorama on the theme of May Flowers, as a celebration of May Day. Please join in the fun for daily reads from writers and artists coming together from all parts of the world with their own unique voice. I’ve chosen poppies.

Who has never marveled at the audacity of raging color, an invitation to abandon sorrow and give in to giddy happiness?

    Orange Poppy Bowl by MarciG
Who has never touched the delicate petals and thought of them as a  lace spun from the heart of magic?
 
         Icelandic poppy by TheFaerieMarket
Poppies are associated with remembrance, with war or peace, with the solemn sorrows of loss. And yet to me they are a call to awakening. And that beckoning towards an unreasonable intoxication, a joyful delight, is a kind of holiness.

         Felted Skirt by Ingermaaike
Each summer they open. No matter how harsh the winter, no matter how many died, they push forth and unfurl as if waving taunting bright flags. Death is not final! And sorrow cannot keep joy from showing it's face again!

MarciG’s flowers

 

                                              

Marci G

at work

I love Marci’s new flower bowls. They have evolved from a bowl that looks somewhat like a flower to flowers that contain the idea of a bowl.

I started in clay as sculpture and transitioned to functional work. Marci’s path is the reverse.

lilies in vases

I have forgotten what's important lately, and stopped drinking my coffee in utter lazy luxury out in my garden swing. I have instead read endless business and marketing strategies about Twitter and SEO and important topics for your blogs. Meanwhile the lilies have opened their petaled doors to offer honey and fragrance. In each place where we planted one or two now five orange and golden faces sunbathe all day, getting the whole complex photosynthetic job of being a lily done without any social networking at all.

I gathered an armful of silent, fragile blooms to put on my desk, and the dining table, and stuck a few in vases if you'd like to see them on my Etsy site, to show how the containers that I make can best be used. Which makes me wonder if the Divine also thinks of us as containers for the beauty of this world, and maybe, at least sometimes, I need to be empty and receptive.

Containers

I had a thought this morning while looking at the flowers plucked recently from the garden, some standing perfectly; proudly - and some beginning the wilted droop. And I thought of how these fleeting perfections are sitting in a vase that will outlive even my own coming and going on this earth, a vessel which may be here in its same form even after homo sapiens are bones and relics.

The contrast appeals to me deeply. I've sought this out in my life, too. I want newness, and adventure, and fleeting pleasures, and also containers that remain unchanged.

rhodos

There is a special moment when I first see that the hard rhododendron buds have bubbled over into these impossibly red red flowers. I am so happy to merely live as a witness! And though my rational mind says no, it is not so, something larger in me takes these rhodos as a sign, an omen, a message that beauty and happiness are constantly renewing resources, that nothing is ever truly lost, but merely dormant. And so I think that if I do not attach my happiness to this one flower alone, a whole summer of loveliness, surprises, and celebrations is waiting. I will not mourn the tulips as they drop their petals, nor say that only the sunflowers smile. I will wake up and look with amazement at each new form that beauty has taken. I think it will be the best year ever.